Smith Anderson is a Raleigh-based business and litigation law firm known for its team of trial-tested lawyers. Recipient of the North Carolina Firm of the Year award at the annual Benchmark US awards ceremony for several consecutive years (including 2023), the firm continues to impress local peers and clients, with some partners even hailed by top trial lawyers at white-shoe New York firms who have worked with them. “They were wonderful North Carolina counsel. They played a big role at trial examining witnesses, they were very useful in that regard.” The firm has made a strategic decision to pursue an agenda of staying “strategically neutral” regarding choosing political sides, something noted as being “very smart but very unusual in North Carolina,” and is active in a range of matters from large multi-party, multi-jurisdiction litigation for companies of all sizes to matters for small private businesses and pro bono clients. Smith Anderson has also emphasized intellectual property as a growth area as of late. Firm partners actually tried a copyright case concerning an architectural design for a developer in the Greensboro area and also had a trademark case against Starbucks.
Addie Ries, who only made her debut in Benchmark in 2021 as a future star, enjoys her second full year as fully established litigation star, a remarkable ascent even by most elevated future star standards. Ries also placed as one of Benchmark's "Top 250 Women in Litigation," an additional high honor. “She is doing some really fantastic stuff with product liability,” insists a peer. “She is go-to counsel for DuPont and Duke Energy. They’ve asked her to be lead counsel for their asbestos cases. She has gotten a lot of national attention for the work that she’s done.” These alluded-to asbestos cases, filed in North Carolina and South Carolina, typically involve wrongful-death claims brought by individual plaintiffs who allege exposure to asbestos at premises owned by DuPont in North or South Carolina. Ries also represents Dynax in approximately 1,000 cases filed in jurisdictions throughout the nation and transferred to the AFFF multi-district litigation in South Carolina. Plaintiffs claim that Dynax and a multitude of other defendants whose products were used in aqueous film forming foam (“AFFF,” an agent which is used to extinguish “Class B” fires fueled by petroleum) contained certain PFAS chemicals, or the chemical precursors to certain PFAS chemicals, which they allege are biopersistent in the environment and the water supply, bioaccumulative in flora and fauna and toxic to humans. Plaintiffs have filed hundreds of cases, both as purported class actions and individual cases, and allege a variety of claims seeking damages for personal injuries, medical monitoring, property damage and environmental contamination.
Cliff Brinson, along with business litigation trial and appellate practitioner Mike Mitchell, has been representing First Citizens Bank in class-action lawsuits filed around the country alleging that the client, as well as numerous other financial institutions, failed to comply with federal Small Business Act regulations in connection with Paycheck Protection Program loans. Brinson also acted with first chair Don Tucker for tobacco giant Reynolds American in a shareholder appraisal action pursuant to North Carolina statute arising out of the merger with British American Tobacco. The defendants, several institutional hedge funds and one individual who dissented from the merger, alleged that the fair value of the client’s common stock at the time of the merger was significantly higher than the value of the merger consideration. Dissenters’ claims, in the aggregate, total approximately $340 million. The case was tried in a two-week bench trial in June 2019 in the North Carolina Business Court, which, in April 2020, ruled fully in Reynolds’ favor. In December 2021, the North Carolina Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Business Court’s opinion.
Christopher Smith, another commercial litigation trial and appellate partner, is cheered for his ability to try a case as well as “equally knowing when and how to avoid litigation and having the nuanced ability to know when to resort to either option.” Smith represents BETA Technologies in a contract dispute, including potential misuse of its intellectual property by a supplier. Smith obtained an early temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to recover data that the plaintiff was wrongfully withholding from the client.
